Robbie Swinnerton serves up morsels from the foodiest city on the planet

crab

11/09/2015

"Tradition looks quite different in Tokyo than, say, Kyoto. Concealed and evolving under constant layers of renewal and reinvention, you have to search it out. Where to start? Just head to the atmospheric nightlife district of Kagurazaka and make your way to Kohaku…"

Starting with this gorgeous opening dish — kegani (hairy crab) meat glazed with a viscous drape of yuzujelly and served on its beautiful speckled carapace…

Then, a couple of morsels of unagi eel, deep-fried with a dusting of kombu and star anise, served with new-season ginkgo nuts…

Owan: a clear broth of superb dashi, featuring a single large and remarkably tasty shinjo (dumpling) made from kinmedai (splendid alfonsino)…

One of the highlights – not necessarily to look at, but definitely to eat: a rich porridge of mochigome (sticky rice) cooked with suppon (softshell turtle) meat, burdock, ginger, shallots and garlic. Strong flavors for Japanese cuisine, but this was wonderfully invigorating food for the evening chill...

Aki-saba (autumn mackerel) that was marinated with vinegar for four days and lightly smoked over burning rice straw.

Charcoal-grilled nodoguro (seaperch), with a cube of pureed burdock…

Tartare of Tochigi beef, served with a quail's egg cooked in the onsen tamago style, sprinkled with shio-kombu (kombu "tapenade”) and shavings of Alba white truffle. The photo doesn't really do it justice – but this too was superb.

The focal point of the meal. Donabe-gohan, clay-pot rice cooked with madai (sea bream)…

02/07/2014

It's not always just about the food. Flavour is everything. Ingredient quality goes without saying. But it's also all to do with presentation – and the vessels that are used to serve each dish.

Such as this exquisite owan bowl from Kyoto. The design reflects the season, with motifs of uguisu (warblers) amid late-winter ume buds. Because it is made of urushi (lacquerware), it holds in the heat superbly.

Inside it held a dashi broth, delicate and profound, bathing a substantial kani-shinjo – basically a ball of crab meat. it was fragrant with yuzu peel, contrasting vividly with the brilliant green of a tiny baby kabu turnip.

It was an outstanding dish: beautiful; delectable of course; and also warming and energising.

11/05/2013

It was British night at The Market SE1, and Yasu-san cooked up a classic. Nothing fancy, of course. And the tableware could hardly have been simpler.

As the starter: crab cake with a curry-spicy Bramley apple sauce…

For the main course: generous chunks of Guinness-braised beef, with Yorkshire pudding and three veg.

And for dessert: a selection of SE1 gelatos. That's hojicha with milk-choco on the right; and the same choco with fresh fig/black sesame on the left.

SE1 is a small place, with only a few seats inside, though there are also a couple of benches on the street outside, where you can gaze at the passing Enoden streetcars. The kitchen space is minuscule, so Yasu-san only prepares limited amounts. Needless to say the beef sold out fast.

Those who got there late had to settle for fish & chips. They're good, though: he goes down to the pier at the end of his street in the morning, and picks up whatever has been freshly landed: it could be kamasu (baracuda), saba (mackerel), or even hamo eel.

10/19/2013

The Solamachi mall, right next to Tokyo Skytree, has several floors of restaurants, noodle counters and miscellaneous eateries. And the higher you rise, the fancier they get — and the more elevated the prices.

Those on the top (31st) floor command the best vistas, past the tower to the city, the sunset and, if you're lucky, Mt.Fuji on the far horizon. So they can charge the most. Expect set meals at this altitude to start from around ¥8,000.

Shokkan is only one floor down but it looks to the north, over the sprawl of the low city. The view is still none too shabby, especially after night falls. But it does mean menu prices are going to be slightly more affordable.

As I write in my Japan Times piece, if you don't have seats booked in advance, it's best to get there for opening time, which is 5 pm. You may not score a coveted window table, but there are likely to be a couple of spots open at the counter looking into the open kitchen.

Besides getting to watch the knife skills of the itamae chefs – and even at this level, it's pretty impressive – another advantage of being here is that you can see the dishes as they go out and ask for any that you don't see on the menu.

That was how we homed in on the yuba rolls. The sheets of fresh yuba were laid out and the itamae was filling them with crabmeat and wakame seaweed. That was good enough for us to put in an order.

It was even better than we expected, as it came topped with a gelée of ponzu (a mix of rice vinegar, shoyu and dashi), a garnish of myoga and a wedge of sudachi.

One of the Shokkan signature dishes – here as at the original Shokkan in Shibuya – is raw vegetables with the trademark tomato-miso dip. Here the crudites, a colorful selection of leaves, stems and roots, are served in a wooden masu (sake drinking "box").

To the Western palate, this combination of acidic-sweet with savory-salty miso seems like a no-brainer. It's not just addictively tasty, it has that festive reddish-orange hue. But even now in Japanese cuisine it is considered rather daringly leftfield (much as the tomato shabushabu is at Basara).

The Shokkan main menu is available in full in clear, accurate English.

(click on them to enlarge)...

And so too the sake menu. But not the slender sheet that lists the specials of the day. This, though, is well worth exploring (if you can bridge the language divide) if you feel like settling in for a leisurely izakaya-style session with sake to sip on...

From here we spotted the oysters on the halfshell – jumbo specimens flown down from Hokkaido (the beer is Yebisu Kohaku, a flavorful lager; they also have Shirohonoka, a version of witbier);

the plump juicy shio-yaki iwashi (salted-grilled sardine);

and the ni-anago aburi (conger eel, simmered and then grilled), with its dab of savory sansho relish…

There was plenty else to try, but we had had our fill of good sake and it was time for the rice course.

The house specialty is kama-meshi — rice cooked in a pot and topped with various choice ingredients. Our choice was salmon with uni urchin and ikura roe, and a garnish of mitsuba leaf. Very tasty and filling.

There is a larger, slightly more deluxe version of this kamameshi, which is prepared in a claypot donabe. Prepared with tiny dried sakura-ebi shrimp and topped with asari clams, small mussels and generous amounts of ikura salmon roe, this is the dish Shokkan has (only half tongue in cheek) called its “famous seafood paella" – and that's the illustration at the top of my JT column on Shokkan.

"By this time, night will have fallen, and the glitter of the low-lying city below will be matched by the lights reflected in window glass from the open kitchen. With the effects of the sake kicking in, everything takes on a very cheerful glow."